A different god

It was Dassehra yesterday and Bijoya started today. For the Muslims, like my driver, the month of Ramzan is on, and the day is one about fasting and prayer. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are at this time of year, too. So must a lot of festivals be, all over the world. As long as the celebrations are about giving thanks and being happy and well fed, who really cares which lord is being praised?

All through my growing up, religion has been about worship of a way of thought rather than a deity or even a string of words recited with a special cadence. My parents took me to churches, to mosques, to temples and to Gurudwaras. I even went to a synagogue or two and to a bewildering series of Taoist shrines in strange places. And found peace in the most unexpected of all these, whenever I wanted and needed it. In that search, I came across pain, too, the agony of a bloody history and the anguish of generations who had seen it happen.

Perhaps the most disturbing images came to mind from the cathedral at Coventry, which is really a museum complex as well. On one side of a wide aisle is a brand new, modern chapel, soaring into a complex structure of blindingly modern, hard, coldly spiritual beauty. On the other, piles of bricks and stone, the devastation of Luftwaffe bombs still starkly evident so many years after the war. There is pain in the bricks, something that makes me want to walk faster and leave the site, go anywhere else, even into the icy new church that chills my bones and my spirit.

In contrast is the serene hull-shaped chapel of Notre Dame de la Haut, at Ronchamp, in the mountains of France. Built of concrete and designed by Le Corbusier, it is perched on a hill, shaded by cherry trees and velvet lawns. Inside, it is stark, simple, monastic, with brilliant light streaming in through tall and narrow coloured glass windows. It is a prayer to the Virgin Mary and her child, who nestle into a niche high up above the altar table, watching over worshippers with gentle, all-knowing, always-forgiving smiles.

When I was in college in Colorado, life was hardly easy or peaceful. Stress relief came through exercise of the vaguely masochistic kind and, when I was tired to the point of physical collapse, in a small chapel halfway down the hill between the dorms and the shopping complex. It was a clean, neat, sparse little room, with a cross at one end and candle stands lining one side. The chapel was always open, always tidy, but I never saw anyone in there. Except once – the pastor of the local parish dropped in after a meeting in the area and found me sitting there, eyes closed, hands huddled into the warm pockets of my anorak.

I was not upset, just tired. I needed to rest, alone, and it was snowing outside, so too cold to walk, as I normally would. So I had come in and, well trained in the process, said a prayer that confused some of my Hindu scripture with the traditional Our Father, with a general chat with the power that could be. The pastor sat at the other end of my bench and waited for me to open my eyes. When I did, looking sideways at him, he smiled. We started talking.

It was not about religion or god or prayer or even why I was there. It was about being Indian, eating chicken tikka masala and watching the dance programme in Denver during Diwali time. It was about acceptance and non-questioning open-heartedness. About feeling warm and safe and comfortable. And that, to me, is what god is all about.